This time a year is a good time to reflect on your career and where it's going. Take a glance back over the past 12 months to see what you have accomplished but also which mistakes you have made.

Not nearly enough who do reflect on their career reap the benefits of glancing back on the past 12 months. We tend to rush which can results in losing out on many valuable learnings and successes.In order for you to gain some clarity, set new goals or resolutions, it's smart to clean out your career mistakes and bad habits you've adopted over the last year, before moving on and leaving behind the past year. This is a process and will also help you if you have a yearly review coming up and need a strategy to lean on.

It's a good skill to learn to clean up the crap and file the successes in you confidence drawer, this will leave you feel more energetic, have more clarity, emotional and mental strength for rocking your career in the year to come.

During the holiday season people talk about new year's resolutions, some love them other hates them. Regardless how you feel about resolutions, one thing is certain; if you haven’t cleaned up and really looked at your successes taken them to heart and learned from your mistakes, you will be repeating them going forward.

Below I will guide you through a process which I’m using to get clear on my year, to see if my goals were achieved and what I learned. I use this process to rid myself of all the negative to leave room for a positive start and I’m sure if you follow this, you too will kick some serious Career Butt going forward.

The Process

Set a timer for 5 minutes and write down everything you have accomplished in 2016? Look back at your year - what have gone well in your career? which experiences did you have you're proud of?

What career mistakes did you make in 2016? here instead for filing them as failures i urge you to draw out what you have learned from them, this way you turn a negative experience in to a learning which is an opportunity to grow.

Dealing with them will be easier when we get distance from mistakes we have made and things we have done which we’re not proud. Because in the moment this feeling occurs we feel might embarrassed or hurt, angry or guilty which does not allow us to see the learning lying just before our eyes. However in hindsight when we have distanced ourselves from it and then we more clearly see what learning that experience have brought us.

What things should you leave in behind and not bring with you into a new and fresh year because it's not serving you? It can be negative self- talk, bad experiences, hurt, anger, shame or people etc.

Write down every single success and mistake, get all the small things in there too they will help you with the overall confidence because we often tend to forget our small victories and successes.

To organise my thoughts and to get as much detail as possible in the answers, I use mind mapping. This also a gives you the opportunity to get pen to paper, become creative and allow yourself to reflect and discover all the gold you have forgotten over the last 12 months.

Train your brain

When you put pen to paper you train your brain to learn better, it also forces us to slow down and become more focused on the task at hand and writing by hand is function as a mindful experience.

We spend so much time working on our computers and using smart technology to help us stay organised that we often forget what old school pen to paper action really do for us.

By slowing down you allow yourself to become present in the moment, you broaden the horizon and become more aware of what kind of career you want and can have. Believe me doing this will show you a different picture than the one you have in your head. You will suddenly see your year in a different light.

This backtracking activity will help you learn from mistakes, take successes to heart and help you build career confidence, change habits, and grow.